QUESTION: Don't the best
manuscripts support the new versions?
ANSWER: No. The best manuscripts
support the Bible, the Authorized Version.
EXPLANATION: The new versions are only supported by about
five of the over 5,000 manuscripts of Bible text. Critics of the Bible claim
that these manuscripts are better than those used by the translators of the
Authorized Version.
This is not so.
The two most prominent of these,
Vaticanus, which is sole property of the Roman Catholic Church, and Sinaiticus
are both known to be overwhelmed with errors. It is said that Sinaiticus has
been corrected and altered by as many as ten different writers. In Vaticanus is
found the evidence of very sloppy workmanship. Time and again words and whole
phrases are repeated twice in succession or completely omitted. While the
entire manuscript has had the text mutilated by some person or persons who ran
over every letter with a pen making exact identification of many of the
characters impossible. Both manuscripts contain uninspired, anti-scriptural
books which are not found in the Bible. The only place where these error laden,
unreliable manuscripts excel is in the quality of the materials used on them.
They have good bindings and fine animal skin pages. Their physical appearance,
contrary to their worthless texts, are really rather attractive. But then we
have all heard the saying, "You can't tell a book by it's cover". The covers
are beautiful but their texts are reprehensible.
And yet in spite of these
well known corruptions, they are the basis for many new versions such as the
New American Standard Version and the New International Version rendering these
versions critically flawed and unreliable. The manuscripts represented by the
King James Bible have texts of the highest quality. So we see that the best
manuscripts are those used by the King James translators.
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